Flattening her hands on his shoulders, she tilted back her head. 'Then why won't you tell me who she was?'
'You know who she was,' he said with a harsh laugh that was no laugh at all. 'She was the lover of your lecherous father, and over twenty years his junior. Now let's forget her, and concentrate on us.' He pulled her hard against him. 'This is our wedding night, and arguing with you was not what I had in mind.'
He was being evasive, but he was also right. A few seconds of feminine insecurity and she had ruined the mood. Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut? Because she was curious about the mysterious Anna of the portrait. She sighed, answering her own question.
'I'd like to think that was a sigh for me, for sex,' Jake said dryly. 'But I rather think it is frustration of another sort: your insatiable curiosity about a certain painting.'
He had read her mind and she flushed a little, but there was no point in denying it.
He shrugged his broad shoulders, his austerely handsome face suddenly devoid of all expression. 'You want the truth? Why not? According to all the marriage pundits, it's the way to go for a good marriage and so far ours appears to be going nowhere fast.' His voice was sardonic. 'Anna was my foster-sister, and I loved her. I was there when she was born, I watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, and I saw her destroyed by your father. She imagined herself in love with him and for two years she thought he was going to marry her.'
Charlie paled as the full import of his words sank in. The relief she had felt that Anna had never been Jake's lover vanished as she realised the truth was much worse. An ex- lover could be forgotten, but a sister never.
When she had met Jake he'd told her the painting was the only one he wanted. Not surprising if, as Diego had said, Anna had died recently. She remembered the look in the girl's eyes. And she remembered the glazed look in Jake's when he'd looked at it. How he must have hated to see her exposed like that...
A host of moments with Jake spun in the whirlpool of her mind, and began to assume a different meaning. Their first night together. She recalled his coldness after they had made love, his questioning her as to what she thought about an older man taking a young woman as a lover. Naively she had thought he was referring to the twelve-year gap between them. Now she realized he must have been thinking of her father.
She caught her breath in shock. 'My God! You hated my father.' She stared at him in horror. 'I'm right, aren't I?'
'I never met him, but, yes, I hated him.' Jake slid a lean hand around her waist. 'But don't let it bother you.' His voice was almost mocking. 'The man is dead, as is Anna. And you are my wife.' His other hand stroked down her throat and deftly unfastened the choker so it fell unheeded to the floor before trailing lower to cup her breast, a thumb testing the hardening peak. 'And we have wasted enough time already.'
'No.' She tried to deny him, but her treacherous flesh was already craving more. 'Let go of me,' she said jaggedly in an atmosphere suddenly raw with sexual tension. 'We need to talk.'
'What you need is very evident.' His dark eyes slanted down to her naked breast, where the rigid tip was a real give-away, then back to her face. His mouth touched hers, very lightly. 'And it certainly isn't talk. It is me, cara.'
The arrogance of his comment and the truth of it mortified her and inflamed her temper at one and the same time. He admitted he hated her father and in the next breath expected her to fall into his arms. His conceit was monumental, and, twisting out of his hold, she took a hasty step back and crossed her arms defensively over her aching breasts.
She was an intelligent woman, and with hindsight suddenly a lot of little things he had said made sense. While she had been driven by an all-consuming desire, even love, for Jake straight into his bed, she was now forced to question what had been his real motivation. The day they had gone to the museum, he had joked about his motivation, and the answer, she saw now, had been enigmatic.
Closing her eyes for a moment, she slowly fought to achieve a semblance of self-control, then, opening them again, she flicked a glance at his hard, handsome face.
'No, Jake, what I need from you is the truth,' she said, proud of her ability to control the tremor in her voice, even though inside she was shaking like a leaf. 'Why did you ask Ted to introduce you to me at the gallery? Surely if you hated my father so much I must have been the last person you would want to know?' Her mouth was dry as she waited for his response.
'I was curious to see what kind of daughter a man who had so little respect for women had produced. But what does it matter now?' He shrugged. 'We are married and have the future to look forward to.'
She saw the familiar shuttered look in his eyes that protected his deepest thoughts, and knew he was not telling her the whole truth. But she was achingly aware of how much she loved him. Her wedding night was fast turning into a nightmare, not what she wanted at all. Jake was right, none of it mattered any more, and she unfolded her arms and took a tentative step towards him.
'I am sorry about your sister, Jake.' She swallowed hard. The words were inadequate, she knew. 'No one knows better than me what a womanizing rogue my father was. And if Anna loved him it must have been terrible for her when he died. I know how I felt, and I know the hurt you must have felt when Anna died. What can I say?'
Slowly his eyes drifted over her—assessing eyes that did not betray a flicker of warmth. Not the reaction she had expected for her sympathy. 'Nothing, nothing at all,' he finally drawled. His arm once more slipped around her waist, and with his free hand he tilted her head back. 'It has already been said.' And the sizzling scorn in the black eyes that clashed with hers sent a shiver of fear snaking down her spine. 'Your father sent Anna away and we both know why. So you can drop the mock sympathy.' Hismouth twisted in a hard, humorless smile. 'You refused to meet her.'
For a split second Charlie was convinced she had heard wrong. But his dark eyes held contempt and the immobility of his hard features told her she had not.
'I refused to meet her?' she parroted. When she had visited her dad for a couple of weeks three months before his death, he had told her he was between lovers. Not that she'd believed him; it had been his standard response for years in his misguided attempt to protect Charlie from his women. But Jake had a different view. Why, she had no idea.
'Anna told me everything. Your father sent her away because his bitch of a daughter insisted upon it. Apparently the girl was arriving for a holiday and she was so selfish she refused to share her father with his lover. Brave of you to admit it, I suppose,' Jake allowed dryly.
'I can't believe what you're saying!' Charlie shook her head free of his controlling fingers, her mind sifting the information Jake had given her with lightning speed. The full horror of what he implied chilled her to the bone, the conclusion unmistakable. The relationship between her father and Anna was immaterial. Jake, her lover, her husband, thought she was a selfish bitch.
'No,' she murmured, briefly closing her eyes, Jake could not possibly believe that of her. She opened them again; her stunned gaze met his. 'I loved my father, but—' She was going to explain it was her father who never allowed her to meet his lovers, not the other way around.
'But, as they say, the rest is history,' Jake cut in mockingly. 'Your father died—if he hadn't I would have destroyed him myself—and Anna crashed her car into a tree a few months later and followed him to the grave. But on the upside you made a lot of money, so it's not all doomand gloom. Now forget it. The past is past. It is the present that concerns me.'
The past shapes the future. Charlie had read that somewhere, and Jake's throwaway comments that he would have destroyed her father given the chance, and about the money he thought she'd made by his death, made her sick to her stomach. But she had to hear the truth from his mouth, however much it hurt. She had been blinded by love for far too long.
She tried to pull free of him, but he tightened his arm around her waist and she refused to demean herself by struggling. 'Given you thought I was not just a selfish bitch, but greedy as well...' her voice was flat and toneless, and she wondered how it was possible for her skin to burn at the contact with his while an icy chill built up inside her '... tell me again why you asked Ted to introduce us. The truth, this time.'
The muscles in his jaw tightened for an instant, and then his chiseled features relaxed, and his dark eyes gleamed with a hint of self-deprecatory humor as they meshed with hers. 'Truthfully? Because Anna had given me the impression Summerville's daughter was a child. When Ted told me you were a businesswoman who had sanctioned the exhibition, I wanted to meet you. What I could forgive in a child, I could not forgive in an adult, and I admit revenge did cross my mind. Poetic justice, if you like. But to be honest, I took one look at you and wanted you, cara. Still do.'